Tag: Robert Berens

The Supernatural press room is always one of the most well run press rooms in the entire Comic Con experience, but it’s also always a nerve wracking experience that I sit through biting my nails terrified my table won’t get to chat with everyone. In fact, we almost didn’t get a chance to talk with Jared Padalecki at all as they ran late, but he was nice enough to stop over for a few minutes before heading out. I was so flustered by almost missing him that I didn’t realize that I never turned off my video recording of the person we were chatting with before him, and thus spent several hours convinced that I somehow had not recorded Jared’s interview at all! Tears were shed. And then tears of joy as we found it!

Here’s our chat with Jensen Ackles, in which he talks about coming to an understanding of the show’s projected ending, and gets a little emotional thinking about filming that last ending scene – that they’ve already set aside an added day for. Tissues anyone?

And here’s our little chat with Jared Padalecki. Since we only had 30 seconds, I was elected the question asker – Jared talks about his reaction and Jensen’s reaction to hearing about the show’s ending and why it’s so important to him that there’s “peace when you are done” for the brothers.

We were incredibly lucky to have some extra time with Misha Collins, and to get rather deep into a conversation about what Supernatural is about and how unique it is that the show has been able to focus so much on brotherhood and to explore masculinity in a different way. Misha was asked to move along to the next table at one point, but then there was no room for him so he said F it and came back and picked up the great conversation, much to our great joy. With bonus Jared tickling Misha’s ear, because that’s how this cast rolls.

Also? Misha has a great new cookbook out called the Adventurous Eaters Club that everyone should check out! It’s available on amazon or at Barnes and Noble stores!

Alex Calvert asked me to toss him a psychological question (or a good question, depending on which one of us you ask) so I attempted it. Alex tackles Jack’s mental and emotional state at the end of Season 14, along with what might be coming up for him and his character.

We also had some great chats with writers and producers Eugenie Ross-Leming, Brad Buckner and Robert Berens, and showrunners Andrew Dabb and Bob Singer.

Berens expressed excitement about the ending of the series, saying that it would surprise people without subverting the emotional imperative of closing out the story. To say that I’m dying to know what they have in store, equal parts anxious and excited, is not an understatement!

Showrunner Bob Singer confided that he’s talking with Eric Kripke later this week about the ending of the show and that Jensen had also chatted with him. He also had some lovely things to say about the fandom, including reminiscing about his first convention experience, which I also remember!

Writer Eugenie Ross-Leming talked about how the characters are coping with their new knowledge that some of their past wins may not have been a result of free will, and how Castiel helps Dean come to terms with it when he’s struggling.

Brad Buckner talked about the emotionality of the Supernatural panel that preceded the press room, especially when the actors were asked to reflect on their many years on the show. He shared that all Supernatural scripts always end with “To Be Continued” – and that the other day the writers all realized that Andrew is now writing a script that will instead say “The End”. Cue lots of sniffling at our table.

Showrunner Andrew Dabb joked that he was just going to “wing it” with the last episode. More seriously, he said what he’s crafting is something that will make sense as an emotional ending for these characters. Which I do think is what we’re all hoping for!

My head was spinning with how much insight we got about the next and final season, and my stomach was in knots with anxiety thinking about what that ending everyone is talking about is really going to be!

Stay tuned for Season 15 – and for more Supernatural coverage from Comic Con 2019!

I’ve come to the conclusion that the last episodes of Season 14 and the entirety of Season 15 of Supernatural are going to be a master class in grief and loss. It’s impossible for me to experience the show, the conventions, the fandom or anything else related to the Show without the spectre of its ending coloring my reactions. That was very much in evidence at the convention in Chicago last weekend and in last week’s episode, the aptly named “Absence.” Supernatural’s absence? That’s pretty much all I can think about right now!

Coincidentally, I’m in the midst of teaching a graduate course in grief and loss to a bunch of counselors in training, so I’m immersed in current research and theory about what sort of things we experience as a loss and the myriad ways in which we grieve them. In a way, that’s making what’s happening with Supernatural and its fandom easier to understand, but in another way, it’s tempting me to grab onto one of the coping strategies for grief that sometimes comes back to kick you in the butt – denial, avoidance, intellectualizing, call it what you will. I’ve been doing a lot of all three, and let me just say up front that it probably influenced my reaction to this episode. As fandom used to say all the time back in the day to acknowledge and validate differing points of view, your mileage may vary.

In fact, my friend Laurena (who helms the Winchester Family Business) and I spent the con weekend together – and boy, did we ever have different perspectives on ‘Absence’! Then again, we’ve had different perspectives on Mary Winchester all along. And while we’re both mired in anticipatory grief about Supernatural ending, that meant we had a very different experience of this episode.

Let me say at the outset that I think director Nina Lopez-Corrado (whose work is incredible) and writer Robert Berens (who has written some amazing episodes) did an excellent job of taking the story where it needed to go. The actors all did an amazing job bringing the emotions that needed to saturate the story. That said, as a viewer, I was unusually reticent to go where they wanted to take me. (Laurena, on the other hand, fell down that rabbit hole and landed HARD).

I watched the episode on Thursday night after a long day of work, and then did a re-watch when I returned from the Chicago convention on Monday night. My second viewing was also impacted by having “Sammies with Sam” at the con – that is, a little meet and greet with Samantha Smith while we ate delicious PBJ sandwiches. I love Samantha and I loved hearing her insights about Mary and about the Show. It was quite clear that she too was grieving, and that shared grief changed my experience of the episode on rewatch a bit. Suffice it to say, this is an episode review that was extraordinarily complicated!

We start off with Sam and Dean returning from the events of 14.17, glad to be home and to share beers as they traditionally do. Dean expresses his relief about Sam being alive in typically minimizing fashion, making a joke about “another miraculous Sam Winchester survival” – when we know he was completely undone by those few minutes of Sam being gone. But that’s Dean.

Sam and Dean acknowledge Jack’s role in saving the day and say they’re glad to have a get out of jail free card, and if you didn’t know that Jack was on his way out before, you certainly did then. No show can have a consistent character who’s a get out of jail free card for long, since it dilutes the urgency of everything that happens. RIP Jack. (sobbing)

The opening scene is well done, the sense of dread slowly growing as the boys try to find Jack and Mary, and then Mary’s phone ominously rings at the other end of the table.

After watching the previous week’s Supernatural episode at a Supernatural convention with some fellow fangirls, I missed this week’s episode entirely due to family obligations and watched it on the CW app on my phone a few days later once everyone had gone to bed. A very different experience, to say the least! That also meant I was somewhat spoiled thanks to a few twitter forays in the interim, which always makes my viewing experience muted. It’s hard to say how much more I would have liked this episode if I was 100% unspoiled, but I don’t think it would have been night and day.

The THEN segment was about ten minutes long, which usually means there’s going to be way too much going on in the upcoming episode. Uh oh.

But then I hear Rockin’ Around the Christmas tree, one of my favorites, and there’s lots of pretty Christmas décor, so that’s nice….and then, in true Supernatural fashion, broken things and lots of blood and a hapless guy screaming “No please no!” One of the crazy-toothed werewolf guys (in a Santa hat) confronts him and grabs him by the throat. Cut to mistletoe above them, so werewolf guy leans in for a kiss – and snaps the guy’s neck. Ah, Supernatural.

I enjoyed that irreverent beginning – nice touches by writer Robert Berens.

Even if I hadn’t been spoiled, it wouldn’t have been a shock to see Michael in a new vessel in the next scene – this one a beautiful woman. Michael sure has good taste in vessels! I thought Felisha Terrell did a good job of channeling Michael’s low key but confident mannerisms. I was happy to see Melanie (Andrea Drepaul) return, and I was also spoiled for the return of D J Qualls as Garth, so no surprises yet for me.

This week’s Supernatural brought a divided reaction from fans, which is almost always the case for this show – but I really enjoyed it. Writer Robert Berens kept things mostly canon-compliant, so I had fewer head scratching or WTF moments. And while the back and forth between story lines still jarred me, at least this week there were only two story lines running simultaneously instead of three or more. So instead of a scene by scene analysis, here are the things I loved, the things I liked, and the things that didn’t work for me in this episode for each of those two storylines.

Story line number one is Sam and Dean together again and in pursuit of something that will harm Michael. Story line number two diverges after the first few scenes to follow Castiel and Jack at the bunker trying to save a hapless young woman who the hunters have rescued from a witch. (Nick is off trying to find himself or his family’s killers, so thankfully no story line number three. He apparently left a note and isn’t returning Castiel’s phone calls, which isn’t ominous at all… but that’s okay, I’m just glad we only have two stories to bounce back and forth between this week because that’s enough!)

I have a lot to say about the first, so let me start with the latter. I continue to like the exploration of Cas and Jack’s relationship that this season is undertaking. Jack continues to struggle with finding his place with the hunters, so hurt after Dean dismisses him that Jack decides to run away. He’s such a teenager sometimes, and I find that endearing. He packs up his little backpack and prepares to leave, writing a note out for all three of his “dads”, but then hears Cas and AU hunter Jules trying to help Laura, a young woman kidnapped by a witch and dying from an aging spell. Jack, who can be quite empathic at times, decides to stay, drawn in by the woman’s dire circumstances and his desire to console her.

Passion is what being a fan is all about. It’s what makes it so fulfilling, what makes it an important part of our everyday lives and not something we only think about for an hour a week while watching a television show or once a year for two hours in the movie theater. That show or film or band or whatever we fan has the power to change our lives – it provides heroes and heroines for us to emulate, it sends different messages than what we hear from the rest of the world which are sometimes exactly what we need in order to feel okay about ourselves. It can inspire us to be better, help others, change the world, keep fighting for our own lives. The community that forms around the thing we’re passionate about – the fandom – also has the power to change us. Fandom can be a group that ‘gets us’ and gives us that all-important sense of belonging. Someone to share our good times and provide a source of support to get through the hard times. All that comes from the passion we invest in what we love.

When the thing we love is going strong, that is a beautiful feeling. It’s heady, affirming, exhilarating. Research shows that fans of a winning sports team have the same physiological and psychological reactions as the actual players who won the game. No wonder it’s important!

When the thing we love does not succeed, or is taken away from us, the emotions are just as strong. It feels devastating, a denial of all the good we found in this precious thing. It feels like an overwhelming loss – because it is one. There’s nothing silly or frivolous about the way fans love, or anything unimportant about what we get from that love. When it’s lost, we react with grief, and it’s just like any other grief. There’s denial and anger and sadness.

In the past 24 hours, quite a few beloved television shows have been either cancelled or not picked up for series by the networks that continue to have all the power. Lucifer, Brooklyn99, the list was a long one. Fans all over the world, of all sorts of things, are confused and furious and despairing over never being able to have more of that thing they love. Anyone who is a fan knows that sort of pain.

I want to send out a collective hug to all the fans who got bad news today, and all the people whose livelihoods depend on making that thing that people love. As a Supernatural fan, the CW deciding against a pick up of the spinoff Wayward Sisters has been a personal experience. Wayward (I’ll call it that because now we’re allowed to go back to calling it what it originally was, Wayward Daughters, and that makes me happy) was special to many in the fandom, because it was different. A show about women, starring women, and committed to being told through the perspective of women – diverse women. It’s a credit to Supernatural that the show created characters in Jody and Donna that resonated so much with viewers that we knew they could carry a show of their own. When that became a possibility, it felt like a remarkable evolution, and a hopeful one. The importance of representation is indisputable, and Wayward was going to be a big leap forward – in fact, we don’t even know just how far the show was going to take us, or how life changing that would be for so many people waiting to see themselves reflected onscreen.

Wayward was also different because it was an idea that began, not in a writer’s room or a network meeting, but in fandom itself. Supernatural fans wanted more of the female characters we had come to know and love. We wanted a whole show devoted to those women and exploring their stories. At the time, it almost seemed like an impossible idea, but that little idea caught fire and gained the attention and support of Supernatural’s writers and showrunners and the actresses themselves. For more than a year, fans and writers and actors joined forces to get the idea off the ground. Robert Berens wrote a pilot, Andrew Dabb and Bob Singer got it made. Kim Rhodes, Briana Buckmaster, Kathryn Newtown, Clark Backo, Katherine Ramdeen and Yadira Guevara-Prip kicked ass. Fans rejoiced, and relished the hope that success brought.

I was truly shocked when the network passed. It seemed like the time was so right, and with a built-in fan base, it seemed like Wayward should have been a no-brainer. Then again, I’ve thought that many times only to have TPTB make another decision. I suppose I shouldn’t be as shocked as I am this time.

Maybe the outcry will change their minds; stranger things have happened. Wayward Sisters was trending a little while ago, while none of the shows that did get picked up or renewed were. That probably says something right there.

And if it doesn’t? They still can’t change what Wayward has come to mean to the fandom. That word was reclaimed as something that was okay, as something that was not a source of shame – as something to be proud of! Embracing being WaywardAF on tee shirts and hoodies and caps and anything else you wanted to put it on was powerful for so many fans. It was a way of saying no, I won’t let you shame me for being different, or tell me that I can’t be myself. Led by Kim Rhodes and Briana Buckmaster’s willingness to be real, onstage at a convention or online in tweets or in the chapters they wrote in Family Don’t End With Blood, the Wayward message inspired many others to be real too. And that is the healthiest thing any of us can do! That’s the true power of Wayward, and nobody can take that away.

I don’t know what the future will bring for Wayward Daughters. I know the fandom that I call my SPNFamily is hurting right now, as are the talented and committed actors and writers who worked so hard to make this happen. I do know that it’s not over. Whatever form Wayward will take going forward, the movement is very much alive – and the evolution that Wayward is a part of is not stopping. So put on your tee shirt and take a page from Briana and Kim because we’ve still got work to do – and don’t let this discourage you from the message. Stay Wayward.